As anticipated yesterday, Google’s conquest of the social network space has begun and today it has a name: interactive Gmail is officially called Google Buzz.
An integrated system within Gmail to organize the myriad of tasks and information that arrive daily through the various online services used by an ever-increasing number of people.
Google Buzz essentially aggregates everything and makes it available to your contacts in a more rational way. The first step towards this system was already taken by Google with the launch of Google Wave, whose functions can be recognized in the newborn Google Buzz.
As with any social network, the user independently establishes the level of privacy they wish to apply to the information they make available to their contacts, ensuring it remains within the visibility of their Gmail inbox or is “exported” directly to their public profile.
Google Buzz is usable within Maps and also works on mobile devices, integrating with software for iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android; this allows messages and data exchanges to be geolocated instantly.
This is precisely the most innovative aspect of Google Buzz, as everything else (status changes, photo and video uploads, external link sharing) is now common and established practice: geolocating contacts, information, and incoming news to make them available and potentially useful.
Google Buzz compensates for the limited use of Orkut, Google’s first social attempt from 2004, which never truly took off despite its age.
One more note: the major absentee within Google Buzz is striking. Among the numerous services that can be aggregated within Gmail in a social format, the only one not present is Facebook, the social network par excellence. It truly seems to be an open challenge between Mountain View and the giant created by Mark Zuckerberg.
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